


baby chick

by thefudge



Category: The Great (TV 2020)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Partners in Crime, Power Dynamics, Scheming, but really a very wtf is this dynamic, ost: mark batson - cupcake kitty curls, v historically inaccurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25491556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefudge/pseuds/thefudge
Summary: But Catherine wants to be the exception. She knows she is. Orlo/Catherine
Relationships: Catherine/Orlo (The Great TV 2020), Orlo (The Great TV 2020)/Catherine
Comments: 20
Kudos: 54





	baby chick

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly don't think i got their dynamic right, but i wanted to write something for them because their energy is so weird and repressed and interesting and layered and i love it!!! i'm hoping they stumble into more intimate territory next season, even though the show seems to position them as friends only, but they're such devious friends! and they have loads of chemistry, imo. anyway, here's to us *looks at hand* probably 4 shippers who like this! (i mean, history shipped them too sooooo)

She is a baby chick, stumbling in high fashion out of her eggshell. Peach fuzz, alabaster skin, blue blood coursing close to the surface in little tributaries. Lovely image of an absolute fucking dupe.

The Russian language lives in diminutives, and in her case, the word is a little diadem on top of her lofty brain. _Tziplionka_.

He watches her flutter her tiny, underbred wings, can hear her mouthing _cheep, cheep, cheep_ , dropping little bits of Teutonic culture and education and fine feeling wherever she goes, like crumbs falling from her beak. And he bows down and picks them up, one by one, foolishly.

The baby chick does not fear the foxes or the tomcats, does not see the many dangers that a loud and busy farmyard entails. The mud and the muck don’t touch her as she twitters her way around court. She is punched and beaten and thrown down the steps like a rag doll, but every time, she seems to pick up more speed. Her would-be innocence protects her. Catherine is the eternal optimist precisely because she _cannot_ envision a world where she does not ultimately get what she wants. There is not a humble bone in her body.

He smiles, judging her fondly.

“You and I are going to remake the world in our image,” she is prone to tell him when they are both lost in their treacherous work, planning the next step in their charade.

Orlo takes off his glasses and rubs an inky stain between his eyes.

“I wouldn’t want Russia to look like me, to be honest.”

Catherine lowers herself on the small rug at his feet. Her gown unfolds around her like a tiered cake. The firelight makes her hair lard yellow, like egg-cream dripping from a little spoon. He sometimes entertains these garish images of her inside his head, of the grotesque, ridiculous ruler she will be, as if to keep himself from idealizing any part of her. She will, of course, in time become another tyrant to please, no matter how much she protests otherwise. Certainly, a much more tempting tyranny, but still quite unchecked in its appetite. He can already see the satirical pamphlets and the piquant caricatures that will circulate in her age. He will have approved of half of them. And still, he is not a little enchanted by the mystique she draws around herself. She is truly beautiful, in an exasperating sort of way.

She steadies one hand on his knee and with the other she rubs the ink smudge between his eyes. She does not make it any better. In fact, she only makes the stain more pronounced. He can smell the perfume on her wrist.

Catherine stands between his legs, determined to remove the ink.

“Nonsense,” she says. “You are a man worth mirroring in every way.”

A strange compliment, at that. 

Orlo takes her wrist gently and removes her hand. “Now, now. I will let _you_ be the fair symbol of our new country.”

“Hmm.” She seems to be pondering the issue gravely. But then, maybe she thinks of nothing at all, because her next question is without much reason.

“Does my presence between your legs _really_ do nothing for you?” she asks, like a curious child. She does that sometimes, tests him under silly pretenses.

Orlo smiles, jaw clenched. His nerves are steady, despite his elevated heartbeat. He knows what he wants, deep down, and it is nothing as unimaginative as this.

“The last time you tried to seduce me I believe I ended up running from the room.” 

“Yes. I was slightly offended.”

“Don’t be. I don’t much like human contact. Or people in general.”

They both smile at that.

But Catherine wants to be the exception. She knows she _is_.

She leans in even closer and then quickly, but not too quickly, kisses him on the mouth. It is not a peck, for she makes sure that he feels the wetness of her tongue.

Orlo blinks owlishly, frozen in his seat.

Catherine stands back, a little flushed. “There, I wanted to know what that was like.”

His muscles twitch. “A-and?”

“You are soft and tender, but with a hint of gunmetal.”

He laughs, shaken by her sincerity. That is what is so formidable about her. She uses her innate desire to express her worldview as a weapon.

“I suppose that’s – something.”

"How are _my_ lips?" she demands.

"Perfectly adequate," he says. 

Her face crumbles. "You are _obviously_ jesting."

Orlo winces, although he is a little amused by her disbelief. "Pardon me. I do not have a talent for rhapsodizing about lips, Empress." 

In truth, her lips were a little more than adequate. 

Catherine sniffs and tuts, recovering. "Well, despite your _appalling_ manners, I would like to try that again, some other time.”

Orlo scrapes his chair against the floor. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

He stumbles around Catherine’s candied dress.

“Why not?” she pouts.

“Because I don’t believe in mixing business with pleasure.”

“Ah. So, it is a pleasure." She raises her chin triumphantly. 

Orlo looks down at her. Sometimes, unbeknownst to him, he shows the gunmetal. There is something terrifyingly brutal in his gaze, warm and calculated, seemingly sweet and cowardly and absolutely effective.

He is, of course, too small for her, his gaze conveys. He is no threat, he wishes to communicate. 

But Catherine licks her lips, as if deprived of a special fruit.

“Watching your mind work at light speed, listening to you talk of issues of state without mentioning cock even once…that is indeed a pleasure,” he says sardonically. 

Catherine drops down on the rug, as if the weight of her corset is too much to bear. She lets herself fall in front of the fireplace, gown askew.

“Oh, Orlo. I sometimes feel I am naked in front of you.”

The Count walks around her, his shoes stepping on her folds.

“I do not quite gather your meaning,” he mumbles.

She heaves a sigh. “I think you do. You are the only man who doesn’t want me in a beastly, boorish way. I should be glad. I know I _am_ glad. I value your friendship. Yet, it is a little vexing.”

“Mm, is it?”

“Yes. Very much. For I know I do not desire you, yet I wish you desired _me_. But if you ever had the inclination to rip this dress off me, you would not be yourself at all, and I would not like you for it. It is a conundrum.”

Orlo leans against the mantelpiece, elbow sliding until he finds his perch. “So you – you want me to ravish you, yet do it in such a way that would be dignified of me.”

“Exactly,” she says, staring up at him with blazing eyes.

“Yet you do not desire me,” he confirms.

“Not at all,” she says, a little too quickly.

“The strange whims of aristocracy,” he murmurs with a smile.

“ _You_ are part of the nobility, Orlo. You are just as impossible to please. I have tried.”

“Perhaps you have not tried very hard,” he teases in that soft-spoken, needling way that irks her terribly. And he mutters a word under his breath.

“What was _that_? What did you call me?”

“Tziplionka. Baby chick. Still featherless.”

Catherine raises herself on her elbows, hair in disarray.

If he will not ravish her, and he will not, at least she looks as if he had. 

“Are you waiting for me to grow into a fat hen?” she asks, affecting nonchalance.

Orlo strokes his lower lip and she can’t help but watch the movement, expect something more of it.

“Yes. And then you will lay golden eggs and feed the regions with them,” he says, disappointing her. “Now, I fear we have overexerted ourselves for the day. I shall bid you goodnight, Empress.”

These are _his_ rooms. She is meant to leave. He is, effectively, kicking her out.

“How bold of you,” she remarks with a little smile. “Very well. You have escaped my clutches tonight.”

Orlo watches her compose her figure and dress. She tucks a loose curl behind her ear. It is interesting to think that _he_ has her in his clutches. That there is something very disorganized between them that collapses hierarchy.

He thinks of Peter and Grigor and George. That sort of frenetic erasure of positions and exchange of identities. But in his case, he and Catherine are not frenetic about this loss. They sink into this partnership with absolute care, even as it removes their escape routes.

Catherine stands a head taller now and extends her hand to him.

“Kiss me goodnight, Orlo.”

He takes her hand in his, lowers his head and presses his mouth to her knuckles. He tastes that milky mystique of the newly born, and underneath it, nothing. She will ride to power on that nothingness, and he will follow suit. 

He looks up at her with that soft, friendly, spineless look. _I am harmless. For now._

Catherine shivers a little.

She buries her hand in the palm of the other and holds the kiss there, as proof.

She walks out of his apartments.

Orlo bends down. 

There is a very small downy feather in front of the fireplace. He blows it into the fire. 


End file.
